December 13th - Day 239

The mysterious photograph above and the three below probably don't give much away regarding what's occuring here. The bottom one reveals most. Firstly because it wasn't taken by me and so, rather than representing the evening in the form of blurry figures and streaky lights, it actually shows what people walking down the road would have seen. Secondly because there are words on the photo saying, "unsilent night. london.2009".

The wooden structure in the top photo isn't a bridge, as Takuan's comment at the end of this post wondered (though I can see what she means). It's a circular bench that surrounds a large tree that stands alone in the middle of Peckham Rye Common. It was also the meeting place, at 5pm, for Unsilent Night, about which I knew nearly nothing. I'd heard about it through Dido, a fellow school parent. I had an idea that it was something to do with a group of people wandering around the streets, each carrying a portable stereo playing music. I didn't know what music, whether the participants chose their own or whether there was a set piece. It turned out it was the latter, written by a composer called Phil Kline. At this point I'll let the official Unsilent Night Myspace take up the story...

"Phil Kline’s Unsilent Night is a free outdoor participatory sound sculpture of many individual parts, recorded on cassettes, CDs and mp3s, and played through a roving swarm of boomboxes carried through city streets annually. People bring their own boomboxes and drift peacefully through a cloud of sound which is different from every listener's perspective. Since 1992, this 45-minute work has grown into an annual communal event that has become an essential part of many winter holiday celebrations around the world."

Strangely, this was the first "Unsilent Night" to hit London. It was organised by sound designer and composer David Sheppard. He'd participated in the New York version that attracted 2000 people and had wanted to organise it in London for many years. About thirty well-wrapped walkers (adults and kids) gathered at the dark tree, carrying old tape recorders, mp3 players attached to small amps (my mode of music) and home-made lanterns. Once everyone was music-ed up, David stood on the bench, counted down from five and said "Play". Buttons were pressed and off we went to walk a set route around the back streets of East Dulwich for 45 minutes.

So the big question, particularly pertinent to this project, is "Is it live music?" And the answer is, "Yes, don't be silly, of course it is". The multitude of music sources create a new sound peculiar to each Unsilent Night event, depending on the cross-section of equipment, the percpective of each listener (participant or passerby) and the physical surroundings. The music itself is an ambient piece of blissful, haunting electronica, heavily featuring bells.

Our musical procession didn't cause much of a stir in East Dulwich. The prospects weren't helped when some of our number, which was already small, became weighed down by small children, and were cast adrift from the rest. And the effect was lost on several people who passed us, because they were listening to ipods. But to be part of it was an uplifting experience. In the pub afterwards there was a great sense of satisfaction at a job well done and a seed sown for many a year to come. And I met a bunch of cool people I'd not met before. Hurrah for live music.

myspace.com/unsilentnight
unsilentnight.com